SCH Pet Managing, Do you do it?

Hey Guys, SMN converted to SCH here.

I know all about pet managing with SMN and when I came over to the SCH side, and reading few posts, I figured I would do it as well. Thing is, I've never felt the need to do so. Apart from having Embrace on my hotbar and using it whenever(manually), I dont feel the need to manage my pet so far.

• They tend to only use whispering wind when multiple party people take damage
  Pet actually uses Embrace at good times(assuming im not using it manually)
  Pet seems pretty smart, smarter than SMN pets for sure

I haven't had any issues healing end game, done Titan and T1 and T2 so far with no issues.

What's your guys take?

Edit: Just to note, I have micro managed my pet as SCH before, Steady, use ability, steady etc etc. It just seemed more of a nuisance than a benefit.

I only control it so I can pop rouse/fey/whispering when I want it. Other than that, I just position it and leave it on steady. Once they add pet macros though, I might macro embrace/steady onto all my heals (assuming that works).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by horaiyo

I only control it so I can pop rouse/fey/whispering when I want it. Other than that, I just position it and leave it on steady. Once they add pet macros though, I might macro embrace/steady onto all my heals (assuming that works).

---

I don't even do that. Nor do I place. I have NEVER had an issue with pet not healing or not being able to keep party alive. Idk maybe just luck lol

apparently the pets heal for more if they are set in a position, if they don't they lag around and don't heal as often

I don't control my pet with the exception of boss fights. in a boss fight, depending on the mechanics i will place my pet and that is all. The pet is smart enough and fast enough on heals that I just place and forget. I have never had an issue with doing ym job while letting the faerie do hers ;)

For the most part I place my pet so it doesn't move and keeps casting. Otherwise, I don't really manually use skills unless it is Selene's skill haste. I can't wait for a macro to cover that though.

Bear in mind that SCH is not my main spec (I main as a WHM), but...

I normally place Eos in Steady -- Obey, and then either Place her or Heel her with me. That way I can control her two CDs (the Fey Illumination and the magic protection buff), but she's free to do whatever the hell she wants to do otherwise.

I find it's just better that way. In general, when leveling as a DPS with an SCH healer, Eos often has the correct reaction even when the actual player doesn't. >.> I mean, assuming she's anywhere near the party (a surprising number of Scholars don't understand that she has a range).

On anything but bosses I don't place but I always micro manage the skills so they don't waste them. I use Selene more than Eos and making sure she doesn't over write her own abilities is a big deal you can keep skill speed or spell speed 100% of the time (50/50). Eos is a must to control cause she is stupid and busts out WD when ya don't need it. The macros will make it even easier to control the little vixens but I would rather they actually fix the problem.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Karnage720

They tend to only use whispering wind when multiple party people take damage

---

Confirmation bias. Whispering Dawn is used the moment at least 1 person dips below 90% HP. Similarly, Embrace is triggered when anyone dips below 80% HP.

A fairy set with Place auto-heals marginally faster (rather, there is slightly less delay after finishing a cast before starting the next). Manual Embrace is far from necessary but it is helpful for difficult content when you don't want her to wait until after a particular hit to start healing. Beyond that I don't personally do much micro-management, but that's partially because I feel Eos is pointless for most fights.

The only managing I do is placing the pet, and on turn 4 I would place her into steady so the cooldowns were ready for the AoEs at the end, but now my group beats it before they start so I don't even bother. I really would love to manage it, but I find I either end up putting it back into obey too fast and canceling the ability, or don't hit it fast enough and it ends up popping two anyway. Such a bother. I fully intend to do it properly when they fix obey! As for embrace she can heal whoever the hell she wants lol

I micromanage embrace, but only to overcure tank while I am stacking extra DoTs. It also makes it easier so we don't wind up healing the same person twice when SCH can heal a second person while fairy is casting embrace. I don't even bother touching other skills yet as there hasn't been a need for me to do so yet, and the buffs they add are negligible and secondary, in my experience only, to skills like Succor.

I have 2 situations

1/ Normal situation
I keep her on Steady and Place and let her do her thing.
I use Rouse+Whispering when needed then she use her cooldwowns
Then back to steady

2/ Tank intensive fights
For fights were tanks take loads of damage and is the priority I force Embrace on her and do not care about her using her cool down
Adlo>Embrace>Physik>Embrace and repeat is very good to keep the tank alive if you do not care about her blowing the cooldowns

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Squa

apparently the pets heal for more if they are set in a position, if they don't they lag around and don't heal as often

---

I believe it's not that they heal for more, it's that their AI is a bit better when placed. They can't cast while moving and a fairy that is following is susceptible to minor position changes because of their master moving, their target moving, etc. By placing them they don't move around at all unless specifically commanded to heal something out of their current range, so their heal AI isn't interrupted/slowed down by all those minor position corrections. I.e. it takes out the 'do I have to move?' portion of their AI and goes straight to the 'who do I have to heal?' portion.

i micromanage to set up fully buffed regens. also i speed runs i may at times manually spam embrace on giant pulls.

I only really use Selene when I play my SCH. Typically manually manage the spell & skill speed buffs as well as Embrace to top off the raid as needed (really hoping for SE to make pet abilities macroable in the future so I can make a mouseover for this). Moving and placing your fairie is a given.

With proper placement you don't even need to manually embrace. If you're spot healing the party with your fairy, place it away from the tank. If you're mainly tank healing, place it near the tank. I also only use selene(except for some extremely rare situations where I need to swift-cast eos out). I back-up interrupt on turn 2 and keep the buffs cycled on CD. I'll manually embrace when they make it macroable for mouseovers.

I used to use Eos when starting off but I use Selene for ALL of my encounters now. There's not much of a need for Eos' boosted recovery and mdef buff if you play well. The only thing you have to micro with Selene is the skill speed buff to provide 100% up time on the skill/spellspeed buff. Personally I prefer control rather than AI so I micromanage Embrace rather than letting Selene autopilot. That extra Embrace to top off a tank before a Death Sentence has come into play multiple times already. If you let AI hold control, Selene probably would've healed a DPS at 30% who just got hit by Fireball instead (DPS should be topped off by WHM Medica II or Cure III).

I manually place them regardless of what I am doing, it's just a habit now. :) I'll sometimes set them to Steady, to better control their abilities before or during a fight, for things like Rouse+WhisperingDawn. Or, that I don't want her to cast or do anything when the tank is pulling. I've keybound Embrace but I don't really manually use it. I'm mostly doing AK/WP and relic things, like Primal HM. I don't do any Coil at all. ;o Having to manually control Selene's two speed buffs is a bit of a pain, but I've learnt to do that. I won't lie; if I see a SCH who hasn't placed their faerie in something like a primal HM, it makes me sad. ;o It's not just about the increased responsiveness, but also their coverage too. :)

Most coil fights I place my fairy, generally close to the tank but far enough so not to be hit but AoEs, like tail swipe. This b/c the fairy spam embrace faster and the fairy won't follow me when I dodge. This leave the tank with something to able heal them at all times.

I manage Eos's abilities with Guard and Steady as basically on and off.
I manage Selene by having Glow and Light on my bar. Since she wont cast the skill speed buff, I try make sure it goes off for our melee.

I wish I could reliably control her silence though, I would so silence ADS and other fights with her then.

if you dont control your fairy you are bad.
Imagine that: you dont control your fairy, she blow all her cds as the fight start(yes she will), after 30s everybody in your group take dmg and you'll have to spam succor alone cause all your fairy cds are off. If the fight is intense you gonna wipe your group cause you sucked.
leave your fairy on steady 100% of time, place her IF needed(90% of the time) and blow her cds when YOU see fit, not her. Pro tip for that: when you need to blow her cds, heel(if need)>rouse>fey illumination> she'll use whispering down on her own, after that you have 60s to put her on steady again, but make sure to not rush cause if you steady her before whispering down is totally off animation you can get the CD and the skill wont go out. its like those instant skills with long animation, if you cancel you'll get the cd but no effect.

Most of the time just placing your fairy and using Embrace is fine. The reason for placing her is because she tends to respond slower, especially in situations where you have to move.

Although you can just let her freely cast, I like to keep her constantly casting heals on the tank, allowing you to heal up damage much sooner. Overhealing is a non-issue since she does very little threat and it costs no MP.

I find Obey works better than Steady to prevent her from blowing cooldowns for the simple fact that it doesn't reset her tactics every time you do something. Simply target an enemy, use Obey (she won't aggro if you haven't pulled yet), then put her back on Heel (or Place her) and she'll remain that way until you resummon her. Eos will still use Whispering Dawn in this state, but Selene won't use any of her cooldowns. I find doing this for Selene is more important since you don't want to accidentally mess up silencing DRs, and it stops her from overwriting her Skill Speed buff if you're a bit slow on the timing.

Use Selene.

Put her in Obey.

Done.

I never, ever manually cast Embrace. The pet controls are simply too clunky for me to bother. You can't macro them, you can't mouseover heal with them, there's a quarter second delay between when you press the button and when the pet casts the spell, and if Eos is chain casting her heals automatically she'll ignore your orders anyway. Also, her heal is on a slightly longer cast time than mine, which just makes the whole thing even more annoying to deal with since it doesn't line up with my own casts.

However, I *do* manually position the fairy as much as possible, because her auto-healing works way better when you do that. I also put her on Obey and Steady at the beginning of the fight so I can control her buff usage myself (typically with Rouse > Fey Illumination, which causes her to leave Steady mode and cast Whispering Dawn herself). The buffs are too useful to waste.

2.1 will introduce pet macros, which might make micromanaging each Embrace cast a more attractive solution. But that's only if I can shut her AI off *completely*, and if the command delay is reduced or removed. If that doesn't happen, I won't care very much. I've successfully healed through all of the content in the game including Twintania by just managing the buffs and letting her spam Embrace on whoever she wants and it works great. I can see it being much more useful in PvP though.

I only tend to use Selene these days, so I have her on Obey and alternate her speed buffs manually. I'll try to place her, but in fights that are hostile to that having her follow me doesn't seem to cause much trouble. I use embrace manually to either keep her casting when everyone is topped off (overhealing as a scholar is never bad) or direct her to a particular party member when several people got hurt. I also have her silence on my hotbars as a very last resort, but it's not very reliable.

I might use Eos again if I ever get partied with another scholar, but since there are only white mages in my FC this isn't happening for now :) . At any rate, the way I used to manage Eos was: either there's a big spike of full-party damage coming at some point in the fight in which case I'd keep her on Steady and save all her cooldowns for that, or if the fight just requires steady (no pun intended) healing I'd leave her on full auto.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Azell

if you dont control your fairy you are bad.

---

I dont agree with this at all. We're not DPS(SMN) where NOT managing your pet affects yours damage. We're healers and, personally, apart from manually casting embrace, I dont feel that I need to micro manage the fairy. The broken system vs what you get from it is not that great a benefit for me to do so. When they fix it, I will use it but again, not even necessary. Now if your party is dying, THEN your bad. But if your party is up and running and your not micro managing, how are you bad?

I don't! I moved from SCH to WHM /snicker

But more seriously, I used to only place her and let her do her job. She is rather smart when placed and I can't be bothered mashing a million buttons + my fairy.
As for selene, by default after her summon she is already in steady I think (she uses embrace and cast speed buff) and I would manually trigger haste buff.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Karnage720

I dont agree with this at all. We're not DPS(SMN) where NOT managing your pet affects yours damage. We're healers and, personally, apart from manually casting embrace, I dont feel that I need to micro manage the fairy. The broken system vs what you get from it is not that great a benefit for me to do so. When they fix it, I will use it but again, not even necessary. Now if your party is dying, THEN your bad. But if your party is up and running and your not micro managing, how are you bad?

---

Glad someone else plays this way. And incidentally, the only time the parties I have played with ever wipe completely is generally when the server is laggy beyond reason, or the other healer dies, I swiftres, and they res into an aoe and die again. That is just bad luck.

I only ever micromanage Selene when I want to switch between casting fey light or fey glow (depending on the party make up)
For Eos though, I let her do whatever she wants. Usually it's good enough to heal the tank(s) in auto-pilot if she's near them.

Once pet macros come in though, I'm macroing all of Selene's buffs and immediately adding "obey" after each one because I'm sick of her constantly spamming one over the other at will.

I micromanage Selene more often than Eos honestly. That's only because Selene refuses to use the Skill Speed buff on her own, though. If I can get a party that lets me separate the two skills simultaneously I'll even use Place to get the full effect on the proper party members, but that's usually a hassle and no one bothers except for my FC friends.

I do use Place and Obey in larger fights so they won't move or use the cooldowns needlessly. Particularly things like Titan where the cooldowns are very useful when used properly. I see no reason in letting such a powerful tool be thrown around willy nilly when it can be utilized in a proper manner in an important situation.

As roughly as Azell put it, I must say that I agree with his statements nonetheless.

I never let my fairies do things on their own, I find that I am able to better maximize their abilities if I dictate what they do, when they do it, where they should be, and where I would like it to happen. More often than not, I am able to heal two people simultaneously by dictating who I want Eos/Selene to heal and by healing another person, myself. When I feel that I want healing potency boosted 30% in a rough situation (as just one example, I will say Coil T4 on the enrage timer), I have Eos do so.

When I run into a battle, I immediately target an enemy and jam Obey, because I don't want my fairies doing anything I did not command them to do. Both Embraces are on my bar as well as their other abilities where I can get to them by keystroke or mouse-click (depending on what ability I want at the time).

Now, I won't outright say that those of you who do not manage your pet meticulously are "bad", per se, but I feel like there's a lack of maximization by just letting the pet do as she likes and just placing her in a general area. There are just little things that can happen, such as if you have to step a tad bit too far away from her and you cannot use Rouse on her, All that time Rouse is available and not able to be used is wasted healing potential whereas Eos/Selene could be healing for 800+ HP instead of 500-ish HP. These are just tiny samples of not maximizing one's heal-ability, of course.

I always tell people that SCH is a "busy job", but that's because there are very rare seconds where I'm not pressing a keystroke to do command my characer or my fairy to do something. Even in instances where I am DDing, I still dictate where I want the fairy heals to go. While Miasma II/Bio II's cast bar is going, that's an opportunity for me to click a party member and heal them with "Embrace", then click back to the enemy, cast the next spell and repeat, then go back into my normal healing rituals.

Even for friends that I invite into the game, I advise them to never let their pet do things willy-nilly. I won't call it negligence, because that's too strong a term I'd like to use, but I definitely do not agree with letting pets do what they will.

Now that 2.1 has come out and Fairy control is just like pet control on SMN, I ALWAYS micro manage. Heck I even place now, its worth it now.